1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an instructional method for playing a keyboard musical instrument and in particular to a relative chord method for playing a series of chords on a music keyboard by prescribed finger transitions from one chord to the next dependent upon the musical interval between the chords.
2. Description of the Prior Art
To become a competent musician, it is necessary to learn and remember all musical note relationships, whose interactions together form the rudiments of musical theory. Such note relationships are conventionally taught in an audible manner, with scant visual information to aid understanding. For those students who are naturally musically orientated, such learning may be relatively easy. However, for those students who are not so fortunate, it can prove to be extremely difficult to remember individual note relationships and understand how they are interconnected. Furthermore, while all the note relationships are being learned, it is necessary to learn how these are applied in the playing of a particular musical instrument.
With prior art systems, if you have to play a chord sequence, such as C, F and G, you learn the fingering for all three chords.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,335,630, issued Aug. 15, 1967 to Schmoyer, is for a teaching device for a keyboard instrument, which provides visual indication of the appropriate keys to be depressed in playing a chord in response to depression of a clavial key appropriate to the desired chord. Additional indications designate the note in the chord triad by which chord is identified and the particular finger to be used in playing that note.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,041,828, issued Aug. 16, 1977 to Leonard, indicates a chord fingering coordinator, which is a teaching and practicing aid for music students which graphically displays the relationship of the dominant, tonic, and subdominant scales in a particular key signature and as they relate to the diatonic scale in that key signature. The device structurally comprises a backing sheet that optionally has the scale tones of a diatonic scale named in a row along the bottom, and three preferably reversible panels disposed in staggered horizontal slits cut in the backing sheet. These panels have portions visible above the slit with indicia thereon indicating by fingering number or scale tone name musical notes representing chords or scales. The notes are spaced proportionally to the key spacing of a piano keyboard. There is an optional insert card having two selectively displayable portions, which represent the left and right hand, respectively, with the fingers thereof numbered in accordance with conventional elementary teaching techniques.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,480,521, issued Nov. 6, 1984 to Schmoyer, claims a system and method for instruction in the operation of a keyboard musical instrument, namely, an organ or piano. The system and method teaches the proper fingering for chord triads in the root, first, and second positions so as to play chord triads in the space of a single octave. The system may be operated manually by the student or, in some embodiments thereof, the system may be operated automatically by means of an external storage media device such as a video disc player.
U.S. Patent Application #20020178896, published Dec. 5, 2002 by George, puts forth a method and system of teaching and/or studying music theory and for aiding the practice of musical instruments according to the integration of the color spectrum with notes of the circle of fifths and rearrangement of those notes into the musical chromatic scale. This rearrangement is accomplished by rotating either set of notes (spaced at whole-tone intervals) in the circle of fifths by 180 degrees. The musical chromatic scale arrangement of colors is then applied to various instruments. Diagrams representing the various note/color patterns as they appear on the various color-coded instruments are also provided. Scale and/or chord charts or diagrams for various instruments are also provided. The inventive color code is also applied to tablature, as well as to inventive forms of music notation.
U.S. Patent Application #20020050206, published May 2, 2002 by MacCutcheon, concerns a method facilitating the learning of music by matching coded note symbols of musical compositions to coded note location and formation identifiers of instruments. Colors, that each has a name beginning with one of the letter names of the musical alphabet, are combined with pitch marks, enabling the coding of musical notes. In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the colors are paired with stylized animal images. These animal images' names are coupled with the color names of the invention via reiteration of the first letter of the names to enhance the remembering of the relationship between color and note. The invention's color coding system is also applied to musical composition structures for easy identification of musical elements such as compositional keys and key signature.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,724, issued Nov. 11, 1997 to Bubar, provides a method of teaching music and provides the charts to do so. The method includes the steps of teaching the student that “every other finger plays every other key” and showing the student the hand placement on the keyboard that will correspond to a given set of indicia. The method provides a series of charts using indicia that progressively allows the student to play chords with either hand, a melody with the right hand while playing a chord with the left hand, or a multi-key melody with the right hand while playing a chord with the left hand. The method also instructs the student how the sheet music corresponds to the indicia in the charts so that the student can play sheet music.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,388,182, issued May 14, 2002 to Bermudez, shows a music teaching method that utilizes a musical notation sheet to depict a song and a keyboard for playing the song. The notation sheet has a staff that has a single line with numbers printed above and below the line. The numbers correspond to both the fingers of the hands (1-5 from thumb to pinkie) and ten consecutive white keys on a keyboard. Suitable symbols indicate both hands and keyboard. The student is directed to place the hands on the keyboard with the each numbered finger on the same numbered key and to depress that key when its number appears on the music sheet using the fingers of the left hand for the numbers below the staff line and the fingers of the right hand for the numbers above the staff line.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,203,345, issued May 20, 1980 to Collin, describes an automatic visual music teaching device for displaying the structure of coded chords. The device comprises a plurality of actuable switches for selecting a desired coded chord. Signals associated with the actuated switches are temporarily stored and are indicative of the desired coded chord to be visually displayed. A further switch is activated to transfer the stored signals indicative of the desired coded chord to a decoding circuit. The decoded circuit feeds a memory system to select in a matrix the composite parts of the desired coded chord in accordance with a coded data signal sent to it by the decoder whereby the composite parts of the desired coded chord are visually indicated on a visual display element. The method of visually teaching the component part structure of musical coded chords comprises simply the step of selecting switches having coded marking thereon representative of musical notes in major and minor tones and corresponding to a desired coded chord for transferring a corresponding signal to a temporary storage circuit. A transfer switch is then depressed to obtain the visual indication of the composite parts of the desired coded chord for learning purposes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,198,890, issued Apr. 22, 1980 to Massey, discloses a keyboard system for musical instruments, in which primary digitals of a musical keyboard are actuated in the same fingering sequence for all key signatures. Each primary digital forms part of a three-section group that has two secondary digitals for producing the sharps and flats. Through a separate selector keyboard, the tones produced by selected digitals are shifted by a half-tone in accordance with a logic applied program to transpose operation of the keyboard to the selected key signature.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,822,630, issued Jul. 9, 1974 to Leonard, concerns a music teaching aid based on the hands and scales degrees. The device teaches elementary musical relationships and notation particularly in regard to scale tones and chords uniquely associated with pre-known names and order of the user's fingers on both hands. The same numbering of the fingers, from left to right in each also teaches, by association, the first five degrees by the numerical name. The two hands are on a panel that also supports one of a set of strip inserts carrying, for example, treble and bass clef notation for a particular key signature and the first five, or lower five, notes or tones of that diationic scale. The student will have no difficulty in extrapolating the “mini-scale” of five tones to the full octave and then to octave above or below that are learned by use of the device. For teaching chords a pair of hands are provided with only three fingers on each hand that are denominated as Root, 3rd and 5th degree and also correlated as before with the fingers named in that same order.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,208,327, issued Sep. 28, 1965 to Allen, illustrates an instant piano picture chord course, which equips the student with chord charts and fingerless gloves, to which lettered tabs may be removably attached. The letters on the tabs correspond to the notes of the various chords on the charts.
What is needed is a system for playing a keyboard with a relative transition technique to get from one chord to the next without having to memorize each chord individually and requiring either leaving a finger in a first chord position or moving the finger only one note to make the transition to the second chord.